In the past this would be deemed "anti-competitive", now it's perfectly reasonable from an "innovation" standpoint.
I assume there's a gaping flaw in this idea that I can't quite see at the moment ;-)
Building the hardware layer for a telecom network requires access to public land, and often private land where the landowners may not be cooperative. In exchange for the government enabling the telecom to build its network, the government gets to impose rules, sometimes even mandating competitor access to said network.
Facebook is different. The internet is already there, and is not owned by any single entity. Facebook does not need to compel cooperation from anyone to operate. It does not invite regulation in the same way a telecom does.
Now, there are plenty of people who believe that anything is fair game for the government to regulate if it's in the public interest, but I think that position is less universally accepted than that of trading special privileges for regulation.
Telephone tariffs in some parts of the world made long distance relationships very hard. Monopolists (often government controlled) took consumers to the cleaners every chance they got.
Only in the last two decades have prices finally been coming down.
So even those $2000 phone bills could easily be legitimate communication.
Today I'm still very conscious of the time I spend 'on the phone', especially when abroad. On mobile phones I've been hit more than once with a surprise bill because of living close to the border that was in that neighborhood (but the phone company was good about dropping those charges because even if I was on Dutch soil my phone kept switching to a German base station that was very strong where I lived).
Who is the "we"? I certainly think it should apply. I'd argue that the main difference in this day and age is that the "we" now includes corporate entities as persons who, thanks to Citizens United, now hold the lions share of political influence to affect whether regulations like this come to be.
I don't think FB itself is the structural threat to free society - treating corporate persons equally with flesh and blood people under the law is the structural threat. FB is just one of the more frightening corporate mega personages at the moment. Any of them would be equally so if they were as adept at people farming.
Consider the Open Mustard Seed project;
Open Mustard Seed (OMS) is an open-source framework for
developing and deploying secure and trusted cloud-based
and mobile applications. OMS integrates a stack of
technologies including hardware-based trusted execution
environments, blockchain 2.0, machine learning, and secure
mobile and cloud based computing. This platform enables
the managed exchange of digital assets, cryptocurrency,
and personal information. Harnessing mobile and personal
data, OMS establishes a sovereign identity, pseudonyms,
and verified attributes and provides each user with a
3-factor biometrically-secured digital wallet. This gives
individuals control over their identities and their data
and supports the formation of decentralized, responsive,
and transparent digital ecosystems.
https://archive.org/details/FromBitcoinToBurningManBeyond
* Sadly, the developer site is down at the moment, but the design considers a standardized set of APIs to verify identities and allow personal ownership and hosting and licensing of your social media data.
Architecture of the OMS TCC: http://i.imgur.com/HV04itY.png
well, this sort of thing is due (at least in part) to the physicality of infrastructure.
adding more telephone lines (and gas, electrical, etc) is welcomed for the first person to come through, but subsequent businesses/developers have a LOT more pushback if not outright blockage from local authorities.
-Supplies an essential good or service
-Prohibitively expensive to replicate/enormous initial investment
-Inelastic demand
-Region-specific
-Few or zero consumer alternatives
Yes. Let me compare FB to a phone company. When telephony was first invented, it quickly turned out to be addictive to a large chunk of humanity. Did we leave it unregulated? No, we didn't. In fact, there was regulation stating that telephone conversations may not be eavesdropped by telephone companies. Other regulations allowed other companies to be active on the same network so people could call eachother, regardless of their operator.
But somehow, we think that these types of regulation should not apply in this day and age. Strange.